1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image forming apparatus that performs a short-range wireless communication with a portable information processing device.
2. Description of the Background Art
Recently, a device using a technique of a short-range wireless communication for personal authentication has been in widespread use. Specific examples of this type of device include a company ID card using a non-contact IC card and Osaifu keitai (registered trademark) (mobile payment service). The short-range wireless communication means a wireless communication with a short communicable range in a broad sense, but it means a near field communication (sometimes abbreviated to NFC) in a narrow sense. In the NFC, a communicable range (this range is sometimes referred to as a “field” below) is about 1 meter to a few centimeters. The NFC has standards such as FeliCa (registered trademark) and MIFARE (registered trademark). The short-range wireless communication in a broad meaning includes standards such as Wi-Fi (registered trademark) and Bluetooth (registered trademark) in addition to NFC. In this specification, the term of the short-range wireless communication is used as a broad meaning including Wi-Fi and Bluetooth.
Recently, a lot of portable information processing devices, such as smartphones, tablet computers, or mobile computers, have a function of a short-range wireless communication. In addition, processing power of the portable information processing devices has been enhanced.
Under such a circumstance, Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 2011-155495, for example, describes a device that performs a user authentication based on authentication information for each user upon giving permission to use an image forming apparatus such as a digital multifunction peripheral, wherein the authentication information is retained by a device having a short-range wireless communication function.
Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 2012-238178, for example, describes a system in which a short-range wireless communication is executed between an image forming apparatus receiving a print instruction and other image forming apparatus located at a short distance from the image forming apparatus, and both image forming apparatuses perform a printing operation.
Although processing power of portable information processing devices has been enhanced, the processing power cannot sufficiently be utilized for an operation setting of an image processing apparatus.
For example, a digital multifunction peripheral placed in a public space such as a convenience store is used by unspecified number of users. In such a case, if this digital multifunction peripheral is currently making an operation (job) such as a copying operation or printing operation, the other user has to wait until this job is completed in principle. Specifically, while a first user makes a setting of his/her copying job by using an operation panel of the digital multifunction peripheral, a second user cannot make a setting for his/her copying job. When the digital multifunction peripheral already starts the copying job or the printing job for the first user, the second user cannot obtain his/her copy output until the output for the first user is completed, even if the second user can make a setting for his/her copying job on the operation panel.